Leveraging Facebook and Google in Developing Small Businesses

Presently, there is a need to advertise on Facebook and Google to run a business in the current digital world. Both digital platforms have dominated the online business marketing since their coverage is significantly broad with the two sites having billions of users per month. Neglecting the two platforms is more or less like not performing digital advertisement at all.

Nevertheless, some different suggestions have been relayed online concerning the approach of how to advertise on the two large digital platforms. Although there is no doubt concerning the fact that the way you will advertise for a large firm will be different from a small business with a little marketing budget.

In this post, we will be revealing how to approach Facebook and Google to ensure that you get the best out of them as a small business entrepreneur.

Establish your Budget

Before you proceed with online marketing, the primary thing to do is to establish a logical budget for your business. While it is possible to perform online marketing with a meagre budget, it is pertinent to know how much you can spend before you construct a method on how best to use the two platforms effectively.

While trying to figure out your budget, it is essential to consider your annual budget apart from the monthly ones. There is a chance that your online marketing may fail if it comes in fits and starts just like a blogger once mentioned that being consistently present online to serve customers is critical to building trust and attracting conversions. The implication is that while deciding about your marketing budget, you have to consider your long-term goal.

Design a Game-plan

Once you have established your budget, you have to create clear-cut objectives for your online advertisement. Basically, every entrepreneur will want to gain more clients, but is it how to measure accomplishments? What about the rate of conversions? Or the number of sales and the percentage of income growth?

Knowing your expectations concerning your marketing efforts will give you the necessary push to have a sound understanding of your campaign result and help redefine your future approach.

Understand your Potential Clients

Every business is meant to find a solution to a challenge; hence, each company has its group of prospective clients which could gain from their services or products. A significant benefit of Google and Facebook advertisement is that both enables you to target a specific group of people that will see your digital campaign.

Finding Your Facebook Audience

Once you have your Facebook business manager running – details on how to establish Facebook business manager can be found in another post – some tools are available for use in order to recognize your potential clients on the platform. They are as follows:

• Facebook Pixel

This tool is a chain of code which you can install by yourself into your business website. It allows you to trace all the guests who visit your site and consequently, you can forward targeted ads on Facebook to them depending on their behaviour. If an individual shows an interest in your business by surfing your website, that doesn’t mean the person is already a client. It is advisable to get them to encounter your brand on Facebook again. The more times someone views your brand on several media, the higher the chances of getting them to go deeper into your purchase options.

• Develop similar audiences

This tip is crucial for the optimization of Facebook advertisement program. The giant social media enables you to post a list of your present clients, and then, it will generate a list of users who possess the same attributes to the ones you have in your business already.

This tool enables entrepreneurs to focus their ads through the use of location and keywords. However, you have to do some findings to identify the most potent search words for your business. By doing this at the beginning of your venture, you will have a great chance to achieve a better outcome for your business and make your pay worth it in the end.

Google Local Services Ads

This tool is particularly important to those who provide services to homeowners such as technicians, and also the tradesmen too. The tool helps to curates a list of service suppliers of a particular task in a specific location, for instance, ‘technicians in Los Angeles.’ In this way, your business will be placed right in front of homeowners who are demanding for the service you have to offer. You will need to make available your contact details so that you can gain your customer directly and immediately.

Maximizing each platform

While Facebook and Google will both enable you to focus your ads on potential clients and get well-defined analytics concerning the progress of your campaign, there are few differences between the two sites regarding advertisement. Hence, you have to approach the two sites via different means.

As for Facebook, the idea is about developing a community. Hence, once an individual search for a business, the first appearance will be how their friends are engaging with the company. Immediately the person moves to the business’s profile; Facebook will encourage them also to inform their friends to “like” the page. Advertisement on Facebook is usually driven by what you can see which enables you to design what your business has to offer. “Likes” from friends and other Facebook users with image-laden pages will give you the right chance to display your brand as trustworthy.

Concerning Google Paid Search, it requires a different approach which has to do immediacy. Your brand will show in results to a specific search when you use a paid search ad. It means that if your brands deal with flowers in Los Angeles, and an individual will like to get some flowers within that area urgently, you can be confident that your brand’s name will be the first to come up once he/she inputs “florist in Los Angeles” while Google is searching. In this way, you will become the immediate solution to their challenges. Also, there is the use of ratings and reviews in some of Google’s advertising tools such as an aspect of Local Services Ads. Brands with the highest ratings are usually top of the search list. The implication is that reviews and trustworthiness are essential aspects of Google campaign strategy.

Combining both is the best

Although the two sites have their unique strengths; however, there are even better benefits by using the two platforms together. For instance, Kenshoo – a digital marketing technology – once revealed that the Experian’s paid search approach of using Facebook and Google together is an excellent means of gaining much campaign effectiveness. Since users mostly check Facebook first to see friends and other users’ recommendation, establishing an advertisement on Facebook is the initial step to gain potential clients’ attention. It has been found that 90% of clients trust recommendations from friends or family members while another 70% prefers personal reviews from fellow clients – which can be a total stranger they meet on the internet.

In Kenshoo’s case study, the brand disclosed that as Experian campaigned on Facebook and Google, there was a 19% increase in their overall conversions and they spent 10% less total for each acquisition. The application of the two sites as one enables people to move closer to potential clients in several media, develop trust and create a better conversion rate.

Analytics and Pivots are crucial

Google and Facebook ads both offer a series of information concerning a performance assessment of ads. For instance, your ads can be reaching the targeted people, but it is not being converted to leads. The truth is that you have established the campaign and the money is non-refundable.

Luckily, by using online advertisement, you can easily find the ideas that are ineffective and then modify them to attempt new methods. Once you make some changes to your advertisement approach, it is advisable to use the A/B testing principle so as to see the changes you have made and which one is having the most positive influence on your audience. In this way, you can explore that method and apply it to other marketing efforts.

The two platforms are excellent means to raise a small business since they of low risk and effective ways of getting across to several prospects. Facebook and Google are natural means of reaching your targeted audiences who will like to engage your brand and consequently, make lead generation easier and conversion rate becomes higher. However, if you would want to go higher by sorting through the analytics from your campaigns, you can apply the information to redefine your strategy for future use, and as a result, develop a more effective online marketing technique from time to time.